But though left unfinished, the sacristy is wholly satisfying—­more indeed than satisfying, conquering.  Whatever help Michelangelo may have had from his assistants, it is known that the symbolical figures on the tombs and the two seated Medici are from his hand.  Of the two finished or practically finished tombs—­to my mind as finished as they should be—­that of Lorenzo is the finer.  The presentment of Lorenzo in armour brooding and planning is more splendid than that of Giuliano; while the old man, whose head anticipates everything that is considered most original in Rodin’s work, is among the best of Michelangelo’s statuary.  Much speculation has been indulged in as to the meaning of the symbolism of these tombs, and having no theory of my own to offer, I am glad to borrow Mr. Gerald S. Davies’ summary from his monograph on Michelangelo.  The figure of Giuliano typifies energy and leadership in repose; while the man on his tomb typifies Day and the woman Night, or the man Action and the woman the sleep and rest that produce Action.  The figure of Lorenzo typifies Contemplation, the woman Dawn, and the man Twilight, the states which lie between light and darkness, action and rest.  What Michelangelo—­who owed nothing to any Medici save only Lorenzo the Magnificent and had seen the best years of his life frittered away in the service of them and other proud princes—­may also have intended we shall never know; but he was a saturnine man with a long memory, and he might easily have made the tombs a vehicle for criticism.  One would not have another touch of the chisel on either of the symbolical male figures.

Although a tomb to Lorenzo the Magnificent by Michelangelo would surely have been a wonderful thing, there is something startling and arresting in the circumstance that he has none at all from any hand, but lies here unrecorded.  His grandfather, in the church itself, rests beneath a plain slab, which aimed so consciously at modesty as thereby to achieve special distinction:  Lorenzo, leaving no such directions, has nothing, while in the same room are monuments to two common-place descendants to thrill the soul.  The disparity is in itself monumental.  That Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child are on the slab which covers the dust of Lorenzo and his brother is a chance.  The saints on either side are S. Cosimo and S. Damian, the patron saints of old Cosimo de’ Medici, and are by Michelangelo’s assistants.  The Madonna was intended for the altar of the sacristy.  Into this work the sculptor put much of his melancholy and, one feels, disappointment.  The face of the Madonna is already sad and hopeless; but the Child is perhaps the most splendid and determined of any in all Renaissance sculpture.  He may, if we like, symbolize the new generation that is always deriving sustenance from the old, without care or thought of what the old has to suffer; he crushes his head against his mother’s breast in a very passion of vigorous dependence. [4]